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Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

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Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#181

Post by izacus »

kortilla wrote: post #165
izacus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that they will get for kicking out the competition is going to be way higher. That is a learned lesson from Microsoft (and probably others before them). The competition in this case is Apples iOS, for which even HackerNews users love to harp over and over and over again how amazing it is an…

Have you considered those two groups aren’t the same?

I did, but then I'd expect the GPL group to actually comment with the same zeal on Apple articles... but Apple criticism seems very muted in comparison.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#182

Post by tjohns »

bchimp wrote: post #79
ddrager wrote: post #39

This has been coming for a while. We attempted to create a push-based notification system based on MQTT. It worked well, then the notifications started getting lost. Turns out, the receiver service was getting killed in the background. We found out the best way to get reliable notification was through Google's own GCM (which has now moved to Firebase Cloud Messaging. We learned its incredibly difficult, if not imposs…

This has been true for awhile once they forced apps to use API26 or higher (if you want to be listed in the Play store, and really, there is no other place if you want decent exposure.) I had a similar experience switching from "real background" to using FCM. I understand the battery saving motivation, but the problem is that the performance of the google service is terrible. The response time of my simple notificati…

15-20 minutes for a high-priority FCM message isn't normal.

Either your app is being rate limited by the server, or there's something unique about your network setup that is preventing push messages from getting through. There's not enough context here to know what's going on.

(Plenty of instant messaging apps use high-priority FCM messages, and get near instant delivery.)

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#183

Post by [deleted] »

habosa wrote: post #164
Ajedi32 wrote: post #51

So to summarize, to save battery all notifications on Android (since two versions ago) have to go through a single notification service (rather than each app having the option of continuously running in the background and maintaining a connection with its own notification service). Recently Google killed their GCM notifications service in favor of Firebase Cloud Messaging, which (unlike GCM) unfortunately doesn't hav…

[Firebase team member here] As far as I am aware, GCM never had an open-source client. In fact I don't think any "play-services-{x}" library has ever been open sourced.

[deleted]

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#184

Post by gubbrora »

joshuamorton wrote: post #169
jimktrains2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That something is configurable doesn't negate the ability to have sane defaults that most people won't touch.

Often times even having configuration options creates surface for security issues. A good example of this is that there were scams that involved having people paste some script into their chrome devtools and steal data. This worked fairly effectively. Facebook ended up doing some magic to show a warning message in the devtools console to tell people that no, you really shouldn't paste random stuff here, it will do ba…

Hence why I said encrypted.

The impulse to protect people from themselves is a dangerous one. In the article itself we see that in practice it is used to push inescapable spyware.

"But our spyware is better than their spyware!"

Google says they will protect you. But the truth is they are just concern trolling to shut down marginally worse competitors.

For kids and elderly that can't make decisions on their own it could be default -locked to some entity contractually bound to good ior. Locked with an administrator password. That would be a reasonable compromise.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#185

Post by izacus »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #175
izacus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that they will get for kicking out the competition is going to be way higher. That is a learned lesson from Microsoft (and probably others before them). The competition in this case is Apples iOS, for which even HackerNews users love to harp over and over and over again how amazing it is an…

> What exactly do you expect Google to do here? Let app developers and users have a choice.

That was exactly the state of the Android until 6.x or so and I've had multiple frustrating hours of mentoring Android developers on how to do notifications respectfully just to be ignored with "eh, I'll poll every 10 minutes, it's easy and it works!".

And this has been my experience constantly:

- "Eh, I'll just demand full storage access for my game, it's easier to unpack files in root of sd card" - "Eh, I'll just constantly reconnect HTTP no matter what the current device state is" - "Eh, I'll just download 600mb on mobile, it's easier than checking"

There are some developers that did right by users, but enough Android devs are constantly ignoring the best practices of development and users privacy because it's "easier" and requires less code.

Because of that I fully understand Google's new stance: developers haven't proven themselves trustworthy and it seems Apple's way is the only way to defend users against abuse.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#186

Post by anotherwebdev »

ddrager wrote: post #39

This has been coming for a while. We attempted to create a push-based notification system based on MQTT. It worked well, then the notifications started getting lost. Turns out, the receiver service was getting killed in the background. We found out the best way to get reliable notification was through Google's own GCM (which has now moved to Firebase Cloud Messaging. We learned its incredibly difficult, if not imposs…

Have you tried using VAPID? I didn't want to use firebase and the pwa app I made uses VAPID instead and push notifications show fine. Couldn't that be used in native push notifications, too?

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/07/web-push-i...

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#187

Post by verbatim »

sli wrote: post #102
kartan wrote: post #26

> Problem: The Firebase Android client library is proprietary, meaning FOSS apps can not use it. Apps that do not comply are reported to the user as "using too much battery". This is a standard on the industry. From 1999: https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_i... It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that th…

Windows 8.1 was absolutely determined to convince me that my brand new i5 was incompatible with Windows 8.1. MS hasn't stopped with the incompatibility garbage.

In a world where CPUs now require microcode updates to run securely, it's not very obvious that this is bad behavior.

Maybe erring on the side of safety here makes sense?

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#188

Post by lern_too_spel »

gubbrora wrote: post #135
izacus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that they will get for kicking out the competition is going to be way higher. That is a learned lesson from Microsoft (and probably others before them). The competition in this case is Apples iOS, for which even HackerNews users love to harp over and over and over again how amazing it is an…

An ideal platform would use a foss compatible framework. It would allow the user to configure which server to use to push notifications(one server for all apps, since that is needed for battery reasons). Notifications would be encrypted with the apps key.

This is possible to build on Android right now and something I've thought about myself. There is nothing stopping you or me from implementing it, and I've always thought that Amazon should have done it to make it easier to port applications into their ecosystem.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#189

Post by AstralStorm »

izacus wrote: post #185
HillaryBriss wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly do you expect Google to do here? Let app developers and users have a choice.

That was exactly the state of the Android until 6.x or so and I've had multiple frustrating hours of mentoring Android developers on how to do notifications respectfully just to be ignored with "eh, I'll poll every 10 minutes, it's easy and it works!". And this has been my experience constantly: - "Eh, I'll just demand full storage access for my game, it's easier to unpack files in root of sd card" - "Eh, I'll just c…

Defending users by actively lying about battery usage is not acceptable. Battery meter in 8 was accurate and flagged battery eating apps accordingly. This new thing is actively lying when you don't use Firebase, as if nobody can ever correctly implement push notifications.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#190

Post by AstralStorm »

Spivak wrote: post #174
codedokode wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Firebase is not a "kernel", "window system", it is just third-party proprietary library (not essential part of Android as I understand).

I personally would consider notifications and the ability to run in the background to be essential but there's a better test which is the reason that this exception exists in the first place. From copyleft.org: > The system library exception is designed to allow copylefted software to link with these libraries when prohibition of that linking would hurt software freedom more than it would hurt proprietary software. T…

As a daily reminder, this piece of junk will be countermanded by Samsung, Lenovo and Huawei and whoever deploys AOSP as they use their own push platforms.
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